Abstract
In popular perception ‘ozone hole’ is something similar to a hole in a cloth wherein the hole represents a total absence of the surrounding material. But ‘ozone hole’ doesn’t represent a region of zero ozone concentration in the atmosphere. Rather it represents a region of atmosphere where there is a significant degree of decrease in the concentration of ozone. ‘Thinning of the ozone column’ is a more correct description of the ‘ozone hole’ phenomenon. The word ‘ozone hole’ owes its origin to the satellite images which were taken in the 1970s and 1980s depicting ozone concentration over the Antarctic. Those images were colour-coded to depict regions of low ozone in bright colour. On paper those coloured regions looked like depicting holes (Fig. 2.1). Hence the word ‘ozone hole’. The best example of an ‘ozone hole’ is the ozonosphere over the Antarctic which now has only about 50 % of ozone that was present before the ozone depletion started. As mentioned in the previous chapter, a similarly ‘deep and wide’ hole has been seen in recent years over Arctic as well [1–6].
This chapter introduces the ozone hole. It recounts the story of the discovery of ozone hole and explains how the ‘thickness’ of the ozone layer is quantified.
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Abbasi, S.A., Abbasi, T. (2017). The Ozone Hole. In: Ozone Hole. SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6710-0_2
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